Speaking of Mental Health Awareness Week which, I actually do need to remind you, is this week, I’ve actually managed to spot a story about how poor mental health can wreck and end lives. It’s the story of the football manager Matt Beard who took his own life in September 2025. You can read the story here. There are all kinds of legal stuff going on so it would be unwise for me to comment on the actions of others which may have contributed to Beard’s death, but I have no doubt that had I been so inclined the actions of others could easily led me down a similar track.
In later life, I was employed on a part-time basis by the British Red Cross, visiting isolated and lonely people in the countryside. It was a job I loved until I was subject to severe bullying by two managers, one quite senior, and another middle manager at a more moderate level. It was a shocking and depressing – literally depressing – situation, which caused me to have a mental breakdown. They engineered my departure by moving me to a tiny office, a broom cupboard really, in the Easton area of Bristol until I took the decision to resign, after a period of sick leave. The British Red Cross also referred me to their occupational health officer who told me to my face I was “emotionally weak”. In the middle of a mental breakdown as a direct result of the charity’s actions, I probably was.
For years, I asked for acknowledgement from the British Red Cross and an apology. I did not want money: just a suitable apology. After one non-committal reply from the then CEO, they have completely ignored my correspondence ever since. Now, they knew I suffered from severe clinical depression: I said so at my interview and in my job application but that made no difference to them at all, as they made my life hell.
I then went on to work for the brain injury charity Headway which was an okay job in a charity that seemed to me to exist for the benefit of the staff who worked for it and not the service users and I ended up being sacked for declining the opportunity to wipe a service user’s bottom after he had defecated. I was sacked over the phone, told I should not come in anymore and that was it. They too knew I suffered from mental illness. I was told I could not say goodbye to the service users I had become friendly with, which I found extremely petty. Headway weren’t bullies – I found the atmosphere to be nearer Amateur Hour then spiteful – but they showed no concerns for my wellbeing. Luckily, I was glad to escape, despite the loss of income.
I use the examples to illustrate one thing: there are people out there, employees too, who are pig ignorant about mental health issues and, had I been a different person, who knows where I might have ended?
This leads me again to Mental Health Awareness Week. There has been next to nothing in the media about it. The Daily Mirror ran a story about Prince William opening a new suicide prevention centre and linked it to Mental Health Awareness week. I may have missed anything else that appeared in the media this week although Mr Google, which I have used in many different ways, has come up with nothing about it. And why? Because poor mental health is something we pay lip service to.
We come up with all this shit about how important it is for people to talk about their issues but then we do nothing about it. Hilariously, the British Red Cross has its own Mental Health and Psychosocial Support Service – the absolute irony of it – doubtless comprising of a group of highly paid bean counters and pen-pushers that sums up everything about that shitty charity. They almost ruined my life. I ask you as a fellow human being never to give them a penny of your hard-earned.
I’ve long been resigned to the simple truth that I will always have my black dog. I consider the act of survival to be my one great achievement in life, aside from the success of my children (which I know should be enough in itself and usually it is). I did not come out as a clinical depressive at work until later in life but to be fair considering some of the idiot managers I had the misfortune to work for in the civil service, I suspect they would have been every bit as sympathetic as the managers at the evil British Red Cross.
From my perspective, Mental Health Awareness Week in 2026 is a close to being a complete waste of time as it could be. The media – all of it – shows little to no interest in mental health at the best of times, never mind now and scumbag politicians on the right of politics like Rishi Sunak and Nigel Farage tell us that poor mental health is not a real thing – it’s just that some of us snowflakes can’t cope with real life. That attitude, which I fear is far more widespread that we might like to think, suggests that many of us are not simply unaware of mental health problems, many of us simply don’t believe us.
The story of Matt Beard is heartbreaking. Stories of people taking their own lives due to poor mental health are always heartbreaking. But they are all, every single one, avoidable. Are things better than they used to be for those with mental health problems? I am beginning to doubt it.
There is help out there but you have to demand it, to insist on it, to refuse to leave the GP surgery until you are listened to. And guess what? If you have, say depression, you may be too ill to put up a fight.
The Samaritans are there, though. As usual in Britain, the backstop is always charity, not the state, as it is with food poverty, so it is with mental health. If you need help, please call them. That’s why their details head this blog. For now, they are enough because they have to be. And yes, do talk to someone you love about your problems. More people care about you than you could ever imagine. As ever, there are more good people than bad ones. Even in the British Red Cross.
